Wayne A. Lee, a VC&G reader, recently wrote me about an odd game title that has been haunting him for years.

It was [your Retro Scan of the Week column] that brought to mind an ad I saw way back in the 80s in Compute! magazine for a Commodore 64 game called “Babies of the Dirt.” I’d never seen the game itself, but the game’s bizarre title has remained stuck in my head for decades. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the game was never released, but a few years ago I found the ad, and I scanned it (it’s from the December 1983 issue of Compute!).

Do you know anything about Entech, or this game? I wonder if any of your readers would. Googling the exact phrase “Babies of the Dirt” turns up nothing, and no one I’ve ever asked has ever heard of it.

Unfortunately, I know nothing about either Entech or the mysterious Babies of the Dirt for the Commodore 64, but the game sure sounds dramatic. Here’s the description from the ad:

An earthquake sucks you to the center of the earth. To escape you must battle the BABIES OF THE DIRT. But, don’t miss or its doomsday! Watch out for their mother.

[ Continue reading Babies of the Dirt: Entech’s Dirty Secret? » ]

Hmm. I wonder what game this is a copy of?

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If one guy can get $9000 for this on eBay…

…what do you think I could get for this? Not to mention the bajillions of games, controllers, and accessories not on that list. I just want to know what to put on my insurance claim form if my house burns down.

[Special thanks to Chris for sending this my way.]

Because they make game covers like this:

Ah — nothing like a Japanese Famicom Disk System classic. Is anybody out there willing to attempt an interpretation of this game’s synopsis from this picture alone? You’re up for a serious challenge.

Heck, I’ve played it and I still don’t know what it’s about.

I acquired this slick brochure promoting “The Voice” some years ago when I bought a nice collection of Odyssey 2 stuff. The Voice add-on unit apparently added speech synthesizer capabilities (and enhanced sound effects, according to the flier) to Magnavox’s Odyssey 2 console. I don’t own a “The Voice,” but I’ve always wanted one. They’re very rare, so if anybody has one they don’t want anymore, let me know.

Did anyone out there have one of these units?

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

It’s 1987. Your ravenous love for Nintendo’s new console leads you to rent every new game released for the system, craving the joy of each new experience. One day, a stranger walks up to you on the street and offers you a device that lets you play nearly all the NES games ever released (or ever will be released) around the world on a single magic cartridge. What do you say?

Twenty years ago, such a contraption would have seemed laughably impossible. But that same mind-blowing scenario (minus the mysterious stranger) has become a reality in 2007 with RetroZone‘s PowerPak NES flash cartridge. Brian Parker, the man behind RetroZone and the PowerPak, put forth a monumental effort to bring this technically challenging dream product to market.

The PowerPak retains the familiar form factor of classic licensed NES cartridges, albeit rendered in a translucent orange plastic. Cut from top edge of each PowerPak is a notch through which a standard compact flash (CF) card may be conveniently inserted or removed. Turn on a NES with the PowerPak cart inside, and you’ll see an on-screen menu that lists all the games on the CF card. Pick one from the list, you’ll be playing the game as if you had the game’s original cartridge in the console.

With a flash “multicart” like the PowerPak, NES users no longer need to switch cartridges between games, except for the few games that the PowerPak doesn’t support (see below). Legal vagaries be damned: as an owner of over 250 NES cartridges, I find the convenience of this feature worth the price of the PowerPak alone.

[ Continue reading [ VC&G Review ] PowerPak NES Flash Cartridge » ]

In this excerpt from the first level of Spawn for the SNES, we watch as Spawn’s mere presence compels the limitless forces of evil to repeatedly hurl themselves off the top of a skyscraper.

I left this game on for a few hours recently while I did my laundry. By the time I got back, I was morally responsible for the deaths of thousands of pipe-wielding street thugs. And somehow, I didn’t feel bad about it — there’s always more where that came from.

You don’t have to check your calendar; you know, instinctively, what time of year it is. You get that warm tingling feeling in your gut that grows stronger as the big day approaches — the greatest day of the year. You’re a Halloween freak.

Some video game fans have a tough time figuring out what costume to wear on All Hallows’ Eve, so as per tradition, I figured I’d help them out and provide some detailed suggestions geared towards the gaming enthusiast. Any of the ten costumes listed below is guaranteed to make you popular at the office Halloween party, on the street begging for candy, or anywhere in between.

[ Continue reading VC&G’s Halloween Video Game Costume Ideas (2007) » ]

How many of these games have you played?

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

It happens to the best of us.

How many of these puppies do you have sitting around? A fellow on eBay is selling a lot of 36. I’ll have to admit: I have a box of a few dozen myself.

The object in question, of course, is the once-essential manual RF switch, commonly known as a “TV/GAME” switch. Such switches were used to alternate between RF video/audio input from a video game system or home computer and a broadcast (or cable) TV antenna signal. They went the way of the dodo in the mid-1980s — first in Japan with the introduction of Nintendo’s innovative automatic RF switch box (it came packaged with every Famicom produced from 1983-1993), and then in the US around 1985 with the introduction of the NES (which included an automatic switch box with every unit sold). Later, RF switches in general became endangered once nearly all consumer TV sets started shipping with separate A/V jacks for composite video and stereo audio. The choice was natural, as video quality through an RF antenna input is inferior to a composite video connection.

Even among collectors, manual TV/GAME switches are mostly useless these days because most of us try to make at least composite (or better) video connections to our TVs, either via special cables or modifications to the systems themselves. Still, if you want to play classic machines like the Atari VCS without video hacks, you’ll probably need to use one.

Does anybody out there collect these things? We’d love to hear from you.